A Good Man in Rwanda Our World

to piece together the story of an unsung hero. An unarmed UN

peacekeepers from Senator also the lives of hundreds of civilians

caught up in the conflict. He was met by some of the scenes

distressing. I will tell you a truly remarkable story. In the midst of

one of the darkest chapters of our times the genocide in Rwanda in

1994, this is the story of a man who put his own life on the line to save

others time after time. He said you can't kill these people, you cannot

take them out at all. I refuse that. And he opened his arms. If you want

to take them you first kill me. With extraordinary courage, this

peacekeeper from Senator saved many hundreds of lives. That is the sort

of Victoria Cross action. I returned to Rwanda and met people scattered

around the world is to tell the six ordinary story for the first time.

I have wanted to tell the story for a long time. It is the story of an

unsung hero, a good man in Rwanda. I am on my way back to Rwanda. What

happened he was so awful, so shocking in its intensity that it

has changed the way I look at the world.

Our correspondent has just flown into Rwanda and centre this.

Automatic fire can be heard from inside the city a few kilometres

away. Several mortars exploded near the airport. Government militia have

been on the streets searching for their enemies. Our correspondent

reports. At least 100,000 people have been killed in the last month.

The rebels are security and this walk at last a long time. `` secure

here. This hotel in the capital of Rwanda

is at the centre of this story. The memories of events you come back

with digital clarity. I have been reconstructing what happened in

Rwanda 20 years ago with the help of some of these old maps and this is

my reporters notebook with some handwritten dispatches that I wrote

at the time. This is Rwanda. This is Rwanda in central Africa with the

capital, Kigali here. In 1994 there was a civil war between the majority

ethnic Hutu in the minority ethnic Tutsi. There is a classic civil war

between the two armies but also genocide war in the majority Hutu

were essentially trying to wipe out the minority Tutsi. As well as

anybody else who disagreed with their very hardline position. I have

never forgotten this man that I met on my assignment in Rwanda 20 years

ago. An unarmed military observer with a small United Nations force

that was in Rwanda to monitor the ceasefire and to try and keep the

peace. He is Captain Mbaye Diagne. An officer of the army of Senator.

`` San Miguel. Set ago is half a continent away from Rwanda but in

both countries French is one of the main languages. Captain Mbaye Diagne

was a relatively junior UN officer. He would not be officially filmed by

journalists like me but there are some shots taken by colleagues. He

hears smoking a cigarette, smiling confident, friendly. What sort of

guy was he? Tall, smooth, energetic. He had a sparkle in his eye. The

Canadian military commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in

1994 remembers him as a soldier who stood out from the ranks. He was an

expressive type of person and that is why he stood out. He moved at

least half a pace faster than everybody else. What he did was in

total concert with who he was. The UN was in Rwanda to try and end the

war that had been raging there for several years. Rebels, representing

the ethnic Tutsi minority, had been marginalised for a generation and

had invaded and held part of the country. There was now a pause in

this war and an uneasy peace agreement was arranged. The UN was

supposed to police it. But the atmosphere was extremely tense. The

UN mission was small and lacked resources.

On the night of April the 6th 1994, a catastrophic events took place. I

rushed to Rwanda fought and you would be a huge story. `` for what I

knew. The president of Rwanda and already has been killed. Rwandan

officials say the plane was shot down. 20 as I do still unclear what

site shut down the plane, the tipsy rebels or Hutu hardliners opposed to

the peace deal. But it reignited the war and the downing of the plane

triggered a wave of terror and killing a hardline Hutus against

gypsies and anyone else who got in their way. Dreadful scenes like this

were repeated right across the country. The killing had begun with

the assassination of the Rwandan Prime Minister and her husband the

morning after the President's plane was attacked. Her children had been

bundled over the fence and hidden here.

This woman is the daughter of the murdered prime minister. She was 15

when her mother was killed will stop she has never spoken publicly for

about Thursday 's. `` those events. The house where she and her four

brothers lighting was in a residential compound UN civilian aid

workers. The commander of the UN peacekeeping mission arrived at the

compound to find her waiting for him. I banged on this big steel gate

and it opened and what I saw in there was a UN vehicle and he is

standing there, not smiling, but confident and within seconds he

starts to brief me on what had happened and all of the other

civilians, they were all clustered around him. He was there sense of

security. Soldiers were still hunting the Prime Minister's

children that surround the compound. There was no time to lose. He

decided to let the kids up, hide them under a tarpaulin and drive

them out. The gutsiness of that, there were no

limits to try to describe how gutsy that was. That is a Victoria Cross

type action. Marie Christine and her brothers made it to the relative

safety of this hotel. All across Rwanda what appeared to

be a meticulously planned operation of mass killing was into gear.

Tootsies were the main target but moderate Hutu were killed as well.

Those that could, fled for their lives. Many thought, wrongly, that

churches would provide safe refuge. Thousands came here to the large

compound of this church. But, incredible though it may sound, some

Hutu priests had been colluding with militia men to attack Captain Mbaye

Diagne. `` Tutsi. This woman had taken refuge in the church in the

early days of the genocide that she will never forget the man or the

place in her story. Captain Mbaye Diagne would make it

his business to come to the church every now and then to check what was

going on. He knew her because before the genocide began she worked for

the national telephone company. He used to go to her office to pay his

phone bills. While this deadly drama was

unfolding, the world turned its back. Western countries and even

the UN seemed to be saying in effect that Rwandan lives did not matter.

There was no grand plan left. The UN in fact, three weeks into the

genocide, was still arguing whether or not it was allowed to protect

anybody and so they were debating it and meanwhile we were in the field

when guys were saving bodies left right and centre, like Captain Mbaye

Diagne, trying to get people to the airport. There were a few people

with a sense of humanity, who went well beyond their orders. They went

well beyond any mandate. It was, I am committed to these human beings.

They will be slaughtered and they don't deserve it. Guys like him. And

guys like Captain Mbaye Diagne were facing everyday guys like this, this

man is one of the killers and has man is one of the killers and has

served many years in jail. He remembers Captain Mbaye Diagne.

How many times did you personally see Captain Mbaye Diagne going

through your roadblock? Was there not any talk of trying to stop him?

To find out more about Captain Mbaye Diagne, this man who risked his own

life to save so many others, I travelled to his home country,

Senegal. This is the capital, Dakar. I've

come to meet a man who was his friend and comrades and who served

in the same UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda 20 years ago. He is now one

of the most senior officers in the Senegalese army.

He was a Muslim? He carried alcohol around in his car to give out to the

militia to make friends with them. Before he was posted to Rwanda, he

lived in this area of Dakar and his family are still here.

This woman came from an army family and net Captain Mbaye Diagne at a

social event in the barracks. They married in 1988 and had two

children. He would phone home from Rwanda once

a week. By now, several weeks into the

genocide, the whole of Rwanda was involved in violence. Captain Mbaye

Diagne was stuck in the middle of it. His own home video of the battle

for central to Gali shows this. He helped organise another convoy,

trying to take truckloads of refugees across the front line to

safety. On`board one lorry was a Rwandan doctor who worked for an

American aid agency at the time. `` ``Kigali. Militiamen forced it to

stop on this hill. It was around here that the lorry

was stopped. Did they try and put you off the

lorry? What happened? They climbed on top of the lorry to

pull you out? What was Captain Mbaye Diagne doing at this

Eventually, Captain Mbaye Diagne and the other officers persuaded the

militiamen to back off and leave the refugees on the trucks.

Two months into the wall and there is intense shelling and small arms

fire every day in the capital. We know from Captain Mbaye Diagne's

wife that all the death and destruction he was seeing first hand

was beginning to take its toll on the man.

Two days after that phone call, he was sent on a mission for the

general. It meant crossing the frontline, again. On the morning of

the 31st of May, 1994, there was suddenly a lot of chatter of the

walkie`talkies of the UN peacekeepers that I was with at the

time. I heard on one of them, we fear that a military observer has

been killed. I rushed down to this point, where the reports were coming

from. It was quite clear that at mortar bomb or rocket had landed

just behind the drivers position `` driver's because shrapnel had gone

through the door and we know that some of it hit Captain Mbaye

Diagne's head. There was blood on the seat and it had gathered in the

foot well as well. And that is how he died.

It was just not right that he was killed. Something was not aligned to

that day for him. One person, being unfairly destroyed like that, does

have a significant impact and did have a lot of impact on the rest of

us, personally. We cried. I don't know what to say.

I think he will always be remembered in this country.

The genocide continued for another four weeks, until the Tutsi rebels

defeated the government forces and installed a new regime which is

still in power today. In the end, what does it matter that

this one individual, Captain Mbaye Diagne from Senegal in west Africa,

saved hundreds of lives here in Rwanda? It does not stack up against

the genocide, 800,000 people were killed back in 1994 in three short

months. There is no moral equivalent. But it has to matter

that this individual, showing extraordinary bravery, tenacity and

wit, managed to save these people and it has to matter that there is

some humanity in all of the horror. He was a man who did simply what he

thought was right. We've seen pollution levels falling

in the last 24 hours and through the weekend we will maintain this

Atlantic feet of air south to south`westerly wind will blow in

cleaner out but also a lot of cloud and there will be rain at times as